Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor was King of England from 1042 until his death in 1066 and one of the last rulers of the Anglo-Saxon royal house of Wessex. He was the son of King Æthelred II and Emma of Normandy, daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy. His date of birth is not recorded with precision in contemporary sources and is generally placed in the first years of the eleventh century; later tradition names Islip in Oxfordshire as his birthplace. The Danish invasions that overwhelmed his father's kingdom determined the course of his youth. After Sweyn Forkbeard seized England, and again after Cnut's conquest, Edward and his brother Alfred lived in exile, principally in Normandy, for some twenty-five years. There he was raised among his mother's Norman kin, an experience that shaped his piety, his friendships, and his later preference for Norman clerks and nobles.

Edward was recalled to England in 1041 by his half-brother Harthacnut and succeeded him the following year. He was crowned at Winchester Cathedral in 1043. In 1045 he married Edith, daughter of Earl Godwin of Wessex, then the most powerful magnate in the kingdom. The marriage remained childless, a fact that left the succession open and later became a central theme of his saintly legend. Twelfth-century hagiographers asserted that Edward had lived in chastity with his queen; historians note that this claim served the cult and cannot be independently verified, though the absence of heirs is not in doubt. Political life in the reign was dominated by the Godwin family. A crisis in 1051, involving a violent incident at Dover and Edward's Norman retainers, led to the temporary exile of Godwin and his sons. They returned with an army in 1052 and were restored to their earldoms. Thereafter the king's room for independent action was limited, and Harold Godwinson emerged as the leading figure in English affairs.

Edward's Norman connections remained a source of friction. He appointed Norman churchmen to English sees, most notably Robert of Jumièges as Archbishop of Canterbury, and Norman sources later maintained that he had promised the English crown to Duke William of Normandy. Whether such a promise was made, and whether an English king of that period could bind the succession in that way, is still disputed. English accounts after 1066 instead stressed a deathbed designation of Harold. In his last decade Edward poured resources into rebuilding the Benedictine abbey at Westminster, replacing the older church with a large Romanesque building modelled on the great abbeys of Normandy. The new church was consecrated on 28 December 1065. Edward was already gravely ill; he died at Westminster on 5 January 1066 and was buried in the abbey. Harold was crowned almost immediately, and the disputed succession led within the year to the Norwegian invasion, the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and the Norman Conquest at Hastings.

A reputation for personal holiness attached to Edward even before his death and was rapidly elaborated afterward. The Vita Ædwardi Regis, composed soon after 1066 for Queen Edith, portrayed him as a devout and peaceable king. In the twelfth century the monks of Westminster, together with writers such as Osbert of Clare and Aelred of Rievaulx, collected miracle stories and pressed for his recognition as a saint. Pope Alexander III canonized him in 1161. The translation of his relics on 13 October 1163 established that date as his principal feast. Henry III later rebuilt Westminster Abbey as a shrine-church around Edward's tomb, and the Confessor became a model of sacral kingship for the Plantagenet dynasty. He was long honoured as a patron saint of England, a role in which Saint George later became more prominent, and he is also invoked as patron of kings, of those in difficult marriages, and of separated spouses. The title Confessor indicates that he was venerated for a life of Christian witness rather than for martyrdom. Modern historians, while not denying his religious benefactions and the reality of his cult, tend to describe a king whose authority was often overshadowed by the great earls and whose lack of an heir, together with his Norman ties, formed part of the background to the Conquest of 1066.